Songfacts®:

• "Godspeed" is about rock stars destroying themselves with excess and arrogance. One verse probably refers to Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.
  
  Kill yourself slowly over time
  Fashion statement suicide
  She's asleep in the Chelsea hotel
  Bad turns to worse and the worst turns into Hell
  
  On October 12, 1978, Vicious woke up in his hotel room in the Chelsea Hotel to find his girlfriend Nancy Spungen dead on the bathroom floor. Vicious gave conflicting stories of what happened, eventually sticking to the story that he couldn't remember. Vicious died of heroin overdose a little over a year later.
• "Godspeed" was first released on the EP of the same name, which was the first EP Anberlin ever released. Less than a year later the band released it on their third studio album, Cities. "Godspeed" was the first single they put out for Cities.
• Anberlin frontman Stephen Christian told Rush Hour Scenes that this was the toughest Cities song to record because the band couldn't settle on a chorus. He estimated they went through 15 before settling on the final.